


This Old House

by Evidence



Category: Night at the Museum (2006 2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fairies, Gen, Ghosts, Magic, Trolls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 22:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3667473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evidence/pseuds/Evidence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by this tumblr post by the-mighty-octavius:</p>
<p>Newly divorced Larry Daley finds a house out in the country that is selling remarkably cheap. However, when he moves in, he finds that it went cheap for a reason:<br/>Teddy, the ghost of the original owner of the house, still haunts the building.<br/>Sacagawea, an Earth spirit, wanders the grounds, making it impossible for him to grow a tidy garden.<br/>Not one, but two swarms of fairies, led by Octavius and Jedediah, feud noisily over the rights to live in his bushes.<br/>A homicidal troll named Attila constantly waits outside to chase him across the grounds.<br/>One of the garden statues keeps demanding gum from him and calling him “dum-dum”.<br/>A bunch of goblins keep playing with fire on his property, so that he’s constantly worried that they’re going to set the whole place ablaze.<br/>((I can’t think of anything for the Civil War Guys. Sorry.))<br/>And last, but not least, there seems to be an insane cat-creature (later found to be named Ahkmenrah) locked in the toolshed. He can hear it yowling and scratching to get out, but was warned never to do so or else risk getting torn apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Moving In

**Author's Note:**

> I swear, I saw this post and then I blacked out and when I came to, this had happened. This thing is pretty much writing itself, so I'm not responsible.
> 
> Also I officially now have more Night at the Museum stories than any other category. That is not a thing I saw coming. I blame all of the awesome evil geniuses in this fandom. You people did this to me, with your keen observational skills and your crazy ideas.
> 
> I have no idea if pairings will evolve or not. As a guess I'd say they're most likely to crop up in a subtextual manner in keeping with the movies themselves than anything more overt, but with my luck I'll end up eating those words.
> 
> (Also if anyone else is writing for this premise, I have no idea, and I'm not trying to step on any toes or anything.)

 

 

If there is one thing that everybody knows about living in New York, it’s that it’s expensive. Ridiculously expensive.

Way more expensive than a newly divorced, newly unemployed, perpetual failed inventor can afford. Even Brooklyn is expensive, despite what sitcoms would have you believe.

Larry’s not exactly stoked about moving out of the city. But with Erica taking Nicky to her parents’ place in California, there’s not a lot of reason to _stay_ , either. What he needs is a break. A job in California, or something that pays enough for him to afford to fly or drive or bus out to visit his son, or at least some place that’s cheap enough for him to survive in it on what little post-divorce money he has left.

He doesn’t even know what ‘property flipping’ means until he overhears a couple of ladies talking about it at one of his (failed) job interviews. Take an old, cheap, run-down property, repair it yourself while you live in it, then turn around and put it back on the market for good money. It’s genius, it’s perfect, it’s exactly what he needs.

Except…

Well, Larry’s pretty short on funds at the moment. That’s the whole point, really. He’s always been good enough at building and repair work, dabbled in construction work before he got married, when he was in an inventive slump, so he’s pretty sure his abilities are up to snuff. But anything he invests in this, he has to make an actual return on. Any place he looks at has gotta be the kind of place that’s cheap enough for him to afford, solid enough that he won’t have to make any pricey repairs, and potentially appealing enough to sell for a lot of money when he’s done. No money pits, no decade-long restorations.

After the first few properties he looks at, he’s pretty sure he’s going to have to ditch the whole plan, but then he gets his miracle.

The property is in _Maine_ , of all places (Stephen King, eat your heart out) and it’s cheap.

Really cheap.

Suspiciously cheap.

‘Was probably the site of a mass murder’ cheap.

But the trio of old guys who’re selling it seem nice enough, and it’s a beautiful place. Big. Old. With a basement and an attic, and a huge lot, overgrown but nothing an axe and some elbow grease couldn’t fix. Probably. Gardening’s never been his interest, but he can learn. The whole thing backs onto the woods, and when he first drives up to get the keys he hears birds chirping and smells fresh air and there’s even a _freaking rainbow_ in the sky.

“She’s a beautiful house,” Cecil, one of the former owners, says, with a look of fond nostalgia as he takes in the overgrown wealth of her. “Got her quirks, of course, but still. We’ll miss it, just a little I think.”

Larry smiles, hoping that the old man’s wistfulness isn’t a ploy to up the asking price.

“Bet Hawaii will make up for it,” he offers.

Cecil gives him a look he can’t quite decipher.

“And _then some,”_ the old guy agrees, prompting laughter from his housemates.

Larry chuckles awkwardly along, wondering what he’s missing, but when he gets the keys and sees them off at last, he feels… good. Like this is a good idea. Like maybe it’s the best idea he’s had in a long, long time.

He doesn’t have a lot to bring with him. Most of the valuable stuff – furniture and things – that Erica left behind was pawned off ages ago, so it’s pretty much just him, his clothes, an inflatable mattress, and some photos of Nicky.  Inside, the house is vast and creaky. Straight out of a ghost story. The key sticks in the lock, and the floorboards groan under his steps. Dust motes dance through the air. A huge staircase winds up to the second floor, and the kitchen is a dark, dingy room towards the back, with an equally dark, dingy door that leads out into the garden. Nicky has to put his shoulder to it to get it to open, because the plant life has pretty much overtaken it.

Next to it’s a room that Larry suspects is a formal dining room, judging by the fancy old chandelier. It doesn’t work when he flips the switch, so he puts it on a list of things to investigate further. Mostly, he’d just seen the place in photos. There’d been an inspection, of course, which hadn’t turned up any significant issues, and with that settled, the price had been so good, he’d jumped on it.

So, now that he’s got it, he starts mentally cataloguing what he can do to _fix_ it. Clean everything, for starters. Windows, walls, fixtures. Cecil told him that he and his housemates had to give her up because they were getting too old for the upkeep, and Larry can definitely see the evidence of that. The stairs to the second floor creak, and the carpet runner is worn pretty much to shreds. There are cobwebs in all the corners, and ugly wallpaper on the landing, but that’s just superficial.

The master bedroom is gorgeous. The ceiling slopes up, eating away at the attic space, probably, and the windows look out over the woods. On the dusty floorboards, Larry’s surprised to see what looks like an old-fashioned globe, etched into the wood.

The other rooms are less impressive, but still spacious. Nicky would have a blast in this place, he thinks, what with all the weird corners and nooks and crannies. He finds a few little storage cupboards shoved in odd places, and one massive, old, ugly dresser that looks like it’s seen better days. He opens it up to inspect the interior, and spots an envelope lying on the bottom.

It’s got his name on it.

_Weird,_ he thinks, picking it up. Cecil and the guys must have left it for him. Is this some old people thing? Why not leave it on one of the kitchen counters, or some other place where he’d be more likely to find it?

Whatever. It’s probably just some sentimental thing about how much the house meant to them and how he shouldn’t change it too much, or something. It can wait. He tucks it into his back pocket, and continues his exploration.

It takes him a while to get the ladder to the attic down. It bangs and groans noisily once he does, and he looks up through a fresh cloud of dust to the dismaying sight of several boxes. Great. The old guys forgot their junk. Probably ‘forgot’ it, too, rather than paying someone to come haul it down for them. But on balance, Larry supposes he’s feeling benevolent enough about the steal of a deal he got on the place to let a little additional labour slide. And who knows? Maybe there’s something valuable up there.

He ascends the ladder – carefully – and once he’s at the top, pokes his head around. Boxes, boxes, hunting trophies – weird, none of the guys had struck him as the ‘huntsman’ type – creepy human-height piece of furniture with a sheet over it, more boxes, pretty round window.

Larry resolves to tackle the attic first thing tomorrow, and climbs back down. He sets the ladder back in place, and goes to check the kitchen cupboards, just to make sure the guys didn’t ‘forget’ anything else.

But apart from an old, worn out copy of the Yellow Pages, and a single cupboard filled to the brim with cat food (old people, right?) things look pretty good.

Filled with the kind of weariness that can only come from moving, Larry nevertheless opts to go out for dinner. Tomorrow, after the attic, he’ll get some plates and cups and things for the kitchen, and go back to living off of microwave meals and cup noodles (except that there doesn’t seem to be a microwave – damn). But tonight, he’ll have something that doesn’t taste like the box it came in. He heads back out to his car, whistling, and locks up behind him with a growing sense of accomplishment to help fend off his exhaustion.

He did it. He’s doing it. And who knows? Maybe fixing up the place will give him some new ideas for inventions.

Dinner still feels lonely, though, sitting by himself, without Nicky swinging his legs in the seat across from him, chattering on about school or cartoons or what books he’s been reading.

He checks his phone, but there aren’t any messages.

When he gets back to the house, the sun’s setting over the woods. It makes for a nice picture. He actually finds himself standing by the car for a minute, just watching it, hoping he can take it as another good sign.

Something rustles nearby. He jumps, and his first thought is _rat_ and then _cat_. Then he huffs at himself. Maybe a cat, maybe a raccoon or something. Hell, there could be a whole jungle out there, with how dense it is. The thought actually makes him feel a little bit regretful that he’s going to probably hack it all away, if only for whatever woodland creature or neighbourhood pet has made a playground out of it.

“Better start looking for new digs, buddy,” he says, and then makes his way back to the front door, and pulls down his keys.

Three things happen:

Larry moves to put his keys in the lock.

The sun goes down over the horizon.

Something launches out of the shadows next to the front porch and snatches his keys from his hands.

“Holy shit!” he exclaims, flailing back as the whatever-it-was-goddamn-is-that-a- _monkey?_ disappears into the darkness at the other side of the porch.

Larry gapes. Then he looks around, but of course, his neighbours are pretty damn far away and you can’t even see the end of the driveway from the road, not quite, so there are no other witnesses to his bizarre mugging. He looks back to where the creature disappeared, but there are no further sounds or signs of movement. And it’s dark.

Actually, it’s _really_ dark.

That was abrupt.

Larry stands in shock for another moment, and then shakes himself. Some weirdo in the neighbourhood’s been setting exotic pets loose into the woods, looks like. Or maybe that was a squirrel? Whatever, he’ll call animal control, once he has time to find their number. In the meanwhile, he remembers – to his relief – leaving the kitchen door unlocked.

With a mental prayer that he’ll be able to find his keys in the morning, he attempts to make his way down the side of the house.

He feels like a jungle explorer. The plants seem to fight him every step of the way, and he’s pretty sure he walks through more than one spider web, and it’s too dark for him to see where he’s going very well. Something _squelches_ unpleasantly into one of his shoes. Several leaves smack him in the face, and oh, yeah, he’s _definitely_ hacking this shit away, and he doesn’t feel even remotely bad about it right now. The side of the house is rough beneath his palm.

When he finally sees the end of the house, he’s so excited, he lets out a whoop of victory and then promptly falls over.

Plants are _disgusting_. Falling into them is like falling into wet garbage, except it smells better. He’ll give it that.

With considerably less enthusiasm, he clambers back onto his feet and starts shoving his way towards the door.

Another rustling sound draws his attention.

Larry looks, and in a splash of moonlight he sees what is _definitely_ a monkey, holding his keys.

“Hey!” he snaps, and then moderates his voice when the monkey dashes away.

“Hey, hey, no, I didn’t mean to scare you!” he coaxes, trying desperately to see where it went. “I like monkeys. I’m a big monkey fan! Why don’t you come on back and give ol’ Larry his keys?”

A stream of fluid erupts from the bushes to his right, and judging by the smell, the monkey who stole his keys is now peeing on him.

Is this like, karmic balance or something? Did the universe decide it had cut him too big of break, so now it had to arrange for him to be literally pissed on?

“That is not cool!” he snaps, and lunges towards the source of the pee-stream. With a few sharp, distinctly mocking-sounding hoots, however, the monkey evades him, and he ends up crashing back into the plants again. With a curse he struggles onto his feet, slipping a few times for his trouble, and looks around again.

No, wait, _not_ nothing. There’s definitely something moving out there, in the garden, although it’s too dark for him to see much of it.

Common sense tells him that it would be smarter to go inside, phone animal control, and let someone who is familiar with the ins and outs of monkey-wrangling handle this situation. But, dammit, this is his big break, and he is no mood to let some random animal ruin the day’s sense of personal accomplishment. So he squares his shoulders, and presses his way further _into_ the garden, rather than out of it.

It’s almost unbelievably big, really. He’s pretty sure the dark’s making it seem even bigger than it actually is. It takes him an eternity to press through the overgrown weeds and tangles, until finally it seems like his feet land on a sort of a stone path. It’s still overgrown, but not quite up to his knees, at least. He stumbles along in the dark, focusing mostly on not falling over at this point, until something _flickers_ in the corner of his eye.

At first, he doesn’t react. He’s used having lights flicker in the corner of his eye, after all. It’s this quiet darkness that’s new. But then he remembers that he’s in his rural, thoroughly plant-filled backyard, and there shouldn’t _be_ flickering, so he whips his head up.

For a minute, he doesn’t see anything. But then there’s a rustling, and another flicker, a sparking strike that briefly casts light on what seems to be a dilapidated bird bath.

Holy shit. Does the monkey have _matches?_ Is it hitting his keys on the thing to make sparks? What. The. Hell?

With an increasing sense of unease, he moves towards the bird bath. A sound reaches his ears, like low grunts, or whispering. Then hooting. More than one monkey? Or an owl or something? A branch _cracks_ loudly under his shoe, and the sounds stop. The flickering stops. He holds his breath, waiting, and it feels like the night air around him is holding its breath and waiting, too.

Then something – something _big –_ lunges at him.

With a cry of horror, Larry falls back, covering his face as the beast lands against his chest. For one split second he’s absolutely convinced it’s a lion or a bear or a freaking _dinosaur_ or something and he’s going to be dead, his obituary a sad story about some random jackass who got eaten by wildlife in his own backyard because he thought poking around in the dark was a good idea. But then the moment passes, and he realizes that the paws on his chest aren’t mauling him, and he can hear a familiar sorting of panting sound coming from overhead.

Lowering his arms, he glances up.

Teeth. Tongue. Big brown eyes. Lots of slobber.

The teeth almost make him cringe again, but then the tongue lowers, and licks a stripe of saliva across his forearm, and he realizes it’s a dog. A huge, _huge_ dog, like a whatsit – Great Dane? Maybe, but covered in shaggy fur, with a collar around his neck.

Letting out a heavy breath of relief that the thing seems to be more playful than malicious, he slumps, and then immediately regrets it when the beast laves its tongue straight across his face.

“Ugh,” he protests, batting it away. It tries to sniff intently at the pee stain on his jacket, though, and it’s heavier than a bag of rocks, so it takes him a while to get it to back off.

“Do people just let their pets roam around out here?” he finally wonders, once he’s managed to free himself. It’s a miracle that hasn’t ended in several lawsuits. The dog tries to jump back up on him, but Larry’s ready it for it, this time, and pushes him away. “Go home, Fido,” he says. “Or better yet, find that monkey for me.”

The dog, instead, opts to head-butt him in the hip, and nearly knocks him over again.

“No, stop that! Bad dog!” he snaps.

The result is instantaneous – ears drop, head lowered, tail between its legs. Larry immediately feels like a jerk, even though he has zero reason to.

He sighs.

“Sorry, boy. I know you’re just trying to be friendly,” he amends, and reaches out and gives the thing a pat. It perks right back up again.

And then it perks some more, lifting its massive head as if it can hear something. Larry immediately thinks of that monkey, and strains his own ears to try and catch any scurrying or chattering noises.

With a sudden, booming bark, the dog bolts off into the plants again. Larry jumps in surprise, and watches as it disappears, way too fast for him to follow. Probably after a rabbit or maybe it is the damn monkey, but he’s starting to think this whole “going into the backyard” idea was poorly thought-out. (And also potentially fatal.)

“Well, this was a stupid waste of time,” he grouses, and then turns to head back for the house. If he can’t keep up with a giant land-bound dog, he definitely isn’t going to catch a tiny tree-hopping monkey.

A grey, faceless figure is standing behind him. Larry stares. He can see the figure, and even in the dark, he can see the faint shape of the house _through_ the figure, too. Like he’s transparent.

Slowly, the figure lifts one pale, white hand up to his face, finger raised in the universal gesture for ‘shush’.

Then he vanishes in the gust of a single breeze.

Larry stands stock still, utterly rattled, completely lost, and that’s when he hears the roar.

“What the hell?!” he gasps.

For the second time that evening, something huge comes charging towards him, only this time Larry is pretty damn sure it _is_ a bear. That’s the only answer his brain can accept, anyway, as the thing comes rushing from the shadows, massive and ill-defined, even though there’s a part of him that’s still fixated on _faceless_ and _transparent_ and explanations that don’t fit into his understanding of reality. Fortunately, his body doesn’t really need his brain’s input to follow the primal response to ‘big scary thing charging out of the woods’, and he’s already running away, tearing through the garden with desperate abandon. He falls, but he falls _forward_ , and somehow seems to keep going in that direction until he slams bodily into the kitchen door.

With a strength he didn’t know was in him, he wrenches it open wide enough to wedge his way inside. Then he slams it closed, locks and bolts it, and listens as another roar shakes through his bones.

It doesn’t really sound like a bear.

“Holy shit,” he gasps. “Holy shit.”

The inside of the house is dark and still around him.

After sucking in several deep, desperate breaths, it seems like nothing is going to come crashing against the door. Larry releases his death grip on the knob, and swallows hard. It was probably a bear. Monkey, dog, and bear. Maybe someone really _did_ release a herd of exotic pets into the woods. Maybe _Cecil_ released a herd of exotic pets into the woods, and his whole reason for selling the place cheap was because the illegal black market animal cops were about to crack down on him, and he and his buddies needed to skip town fast.

That makes sense.

And that… other thing?

Probably a hallucination. Who knows what kind of weird stuff is in monkey pee? Or demon dog saliva? Almost definitely the kind of thing that could make a guy hallucinate. Especially combined with exhaustion and – and whatever’s in all those crazy plants he fell on. Opiates? Maybe opiates? There could have been poppies. It was way too dark to tell.

The kitchen light flicks on. Ah, the reassuring clarity of light. Light can chase anything away, and make a man truly relax. If he’s not home alone and standing a good seven feet away from the switch.

“Good god, man! You like you’ve seen a ghost,” a strange voice booms.


	2. Cacophony

 

Larry whips around and plasters himself against the door.

There is a strange man in his new house. There is a _home invader_ in his _empty new house_ , waiting for him, dressed up in what looks like very old-fashioned hunting clothes, with a barrel chest and a friendly face and Larry can _see the wall behind him._

“Y… wha…?” he manages to get out.

The kitchen light flickers.

The home invader smiles at him, with a kindly sort of pity, as if Larry is putting on a miserable display but he doesn’t intend to hold it against him, just right now. It’s weirdly benevolent and wholly inappropriate and for one bizarre moment, Larry almost finds himself wishing that this was a _normal_ burglar, with a mask and a gun or something, or at the very least, some solidity _._ Because transparency is super distracting, and it’s been a hell of a night.

“You must be the new owner,” the weird man says. “Unless you’re a particularly unlucky thief, in which case, I should inform you that standard policy is to shoot on sight.”

“I’m – I’m not a thief!” Larry manages. The insinuation actually gets some of his nerve back up, which is a good thing, because it means he stops feeling like the world’s about to give out from underneath him any second now. “I’m Larry Daley, the owner!”

The weird man smiles, and reaches out, and claps him on the shoulder. Larry half expects his hand to go right through him, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t quite feel like a normal touch, either, and the air distorts strangely around their point of contact.

“I thought as much! I’m Theodore, the house ghost, but you can call me ‘Teddy’. I expect you have a few questions,” he says, and then he glances around. “I’d offer to let you take a seat, but it seems all the seats have up and left us.”

Larry’s knees give up, for a moment, and he starts sliding towards the floor. Teddy catches his arm with a firm grip, that feels cold and strange the material of his jacket.

“Now, now, man, don’t go to pieces!” he says. “Take some deep breaths. If you think talking to _me_ is difficult, you’ll have a devil of a time with the rest of them.”

“The rest of them?!” Larry asks. “You mean there are _more?”_

Teddy gives him an unimpressed look.

“Don’t try that on me. If I know my business – and I do – you’ve already seen your fair share.”

Larry stares at, and through, the hand on his arm. After a moment, when it’s clear he’s not going to drop straight to the floor, it lets go.

“A monkey took my keys,” he says, a little dumbly.

“Well, every man must face his own monkey sooner or later,” Teddy says. “Now. The thing you need to know about this house, is that it’s haunted. That’s probably self-evident at this point, but you look like the sort who needs to hear it said plainly.”

“I think a bear tried to kill me. I’m not… it was big and kind of smelled like… what I think a bear would smell like?” he murmurs, blinking up into Teddy’s strange, kind face.

“No, Lawrence, that was a troll,” Teddy tells him.

“That was a troll,” he repeats.

“Yes. Which leads into the second thing you need to know, which is that there are trolls in the woods. And goblins. And faeries. And a handsome lady of the earth. You see, there’s something about this place. I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but some time after I died, things started to be drawn here. Myself included.” Teddy smiles. “There are worse houses I could have been destined to haunt.”

“I didn’t sign up for this!” Larry protests, because it’s all he can think to do, really.

Teddy’s nice smile turns into a disapproving frown.

“Didn’t you? I thought you bought this house,” he says, like the world’s most disappointed scout troop leader.

Larry can’t help but shift uncomfortably.

“I didn’t know there would be _trolls_ ,” he objects.

“There are always trolls, Lawrence. A man should count himself lucky if Attila out there is the worst he encounters.”

Larry’s not sure if that’s supposed to be a metaphor or not.

“Attila?” he asks.

“A nickname old Cecil gave him,” Teddy says. “There should have been a note. I was supposed to present it to you, but it wasn’t in its place when I checked. Do you have it?”

Larry remembers, distantly, the envelope from the dresser, crumpled and shoved into his back pocket. It’s probably decomposing in a pile of crushed plant matter somewhere in the backyard by now, but he reaches for it anyway, and in a stroke of luck, finds it still wedged into his damp and grimy jeans. He pulls it out and stares at it. The name on the back is smudged, and it’s definitely wet, but probably still legible.

“Read the letter, Lawrence,” Teddy instructs him. “You’ve had a rough night. I’ll make sure no one else bothers you before dawn, but _only_ this once.”

Larry looks up, and Teddy nods at him, and then, like the faceless apparition, vanishes into nothing.

For several long minutes he simply stands in the kitchen and stares at the envelope, and then, in a sudden, furious fit, he tears it open.

The letter inside is damp, but not much worse off for it. It’s hand-written, but not, thankfully, in an illegible scrawl.

_Larry,_

_If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably discovered the truth – that magic is real, and (quite literally) living in your own backyard. Don’t be alarmed over Teddy. He’s a friendly soul, and keeps to himself. Just don’t annoy him too much. He’s got some sway with the house, and he can give you a lot of grief if he sets his mind to it._

_I’m sure you’re wondering what exactly you’re supposed to do with this new development. We wanted to tell you before, but this isn’t the sort of thing that most people can believe until they see it for themselves. I bet you couldn’t figure out why that old place of ours was so cheap. Well, now you know. As for what to do, there are a few basic rules you can follow that will keep everyone pacified, and sooner or later, you won’t even remember what it was like to live without a fairy war on your doorstep!_

_Now, first things first. It’s best not to go out into the garden at night._

Larry snorts.

_Things tend to get more active under the moon, but there’s no guarantee that the daytime will be quiet, either. We don’t recommend you damage any of the plants._

Larry snorts again, though this time it turns into something approaching a hysterical giggle.

_If you do have to go in the garden (and you will), try and stay on the path. There’s an old shed in the back. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to open the shed door. If it makes too much noise, take a paper plate of cat food out there, and slide it in through the opening. Don’t use any dishes that you’re fond of, because you won’t be getting them back._

He glances sideways at the cupboard full of cat food. Why exactly would a shed make ‘too much noise’?

_Avoid the fairy circles. Don’t light any outdoor fires, don’t play loud music after dark, and if you absolutely MUST leave the house after midnight, try and get from the door to your car as quickly as possible._

There are more rules, tips, and hints. Some of them make sense in light of what’s just happened to him. Some of them are ominous in light of what _hasn’t_. And just what the heck is a ‘fairy circle’? Is he supposed to know that already?

After the instructions are done, Cecil concludes his letter.

_You might not be very happy with us right now, Larry, and that’s fair enough. But try and look at it from our perspective. We’re old men now, not as spry as we used to be, and we can’t keep up with this place anymore. You got a fair deal on it. It might be more work than you expected, but it might be just a little bit wondrous, too. Hopefully, you’ll be able to find it in your heart to forgive us for our deception._

_Best of luck,_

_Cecil, Gus, and Reginald_

_P.S. One last thing – most other people won’t be able to see half of what goes on in this place. We’re not sure how it works, but it seems like the owner of the house is the only one who can really see it in all its glory. For all we know, as soon as we sign the deed over to you, we’ll forget the magic completely. Or maybe we won’t. We’re starting a new chapter ourselves, so we can’t say for sure. But don’t go thinking you can bring in reporters and cameras and make a fortune off of exposing all of this, because you’ll just look like a crackpot._

_They aren’t stupid, Larry. They’re a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them._

Larry rereads the letter, and then triple-reads it, until the kitchen lights flicker again and he nearly jumps out of his skin. He braces himself, for… he’s not even sure what, at this point. But the moment passes, and, true to Teddy’s promise, nothing seems to happen.

His head’s fuzzy with shock and exhaustion, and he stills smells strongly of monkey pee. He drops the letter onto the nearest countertop, and then, with cautious, nervous steps, makes his way up to the second story bathroom. He strips off his jacket, claims a clean towel and some pyjamas from among his packed clothes, and then hesitates.

“Teddy?” he calls.

There’s no answer.

“Um, so, if you can hear me, I’m just gonna… hop in the shower. Just… you know. In there,” he says, gesturing awkwardly towards the door. “So if you need me… knock, I guess?”

Still no answer. Letting out a heavy breath, he heads in, and strips down.

One definite plus – the water pressure is good.

He scrubs down until all he can smell is the fresh scent of his soap, and then soaks for a while, trying to mull over this new development. Ghosts. Ghosts he can almost handle, in comparison with everything else. But trolls? _Fairies_? And where do things like the monkey and that weird dog even fit in? How is he supposed to turn around and sell this place to someone _else_ now?

Well. He could do it the same way Cecil and Gus and Reginald did, as a matter of fact. Since, ostensibly, no one else can see what’s going on until they own the place, there’d be no way for them to tell what was wrong with it until they’d sealed the deal, so to speak. And it’s not like they could sue him over it, because no court would ever believe ‘the previous owner failed to disclose the extent of the haunting and a pixie infestation’ or whatever.

But Larry is of the opinion, just this second, that it would be pretty shitty to do that someone. Like, world-class asshole material, really.

With a gusty sigh he hops back out of the shower. Of course it was too good to be true. But now he’s way too invested in this to just bail on it – financially invested, not emotionally invested.

What a nightmare.

_Maybe it_ is _a nightmare_ , he thinks, optimistically. _Maybe I’ve just gone crazy!_

Yeah, that… actually isn’t a thrilling prospect, either.

He towels off quickly and throws on his pyjamas, plans on leaving his clothes in a pile, then wonders if that would offend the resident ‘house ghost’, then just sort of awkwardly bundles them into a corner and leaves it at that. The laundry machines are in the basement, and he is not going into the basement. Not tonight. Possibly not ever. At this rate, there’d be a zombie or a witch or a… an ostrich or something down there.

Originally, he’d planned to put his inflatable mattress in the beautiful master bedroom, with its windows looking out towards the woods.

In light of recent developments, he shoves it into the smallest spare, instead, which looks out over the driveway. His pump is cheap, and even with plenty of elbow grease his mattress ends up full of more wishful thinking than actual air. But it’s better than the bare wooden floors. Still, no matter how tired he is, he knows he’s not going to sleep well. He keeps the light on and listens to every creak and groan of the old house settling, the pipes clattering, the wind blowing outside. Every time he seems just about to drift off, something wakes him, and he can’t even tell how much of it is just nerves.

Finally, he closes his eyes, and opens them again to grey sunlight and the heavy feeling of a poor night’s sleep.

While he’s contemplating shutting them closed again, a piercing yowl breaks through the air.

Larry’s on his feet before he remembers consciously deciding to stand, one hand gripping a pillow like it’s a weapon while the other clutches his blanket like a shield.

“What? What’s happening?” he asks the empty room around him.

The sound repeats, and it’s either a furious cat, or someone is murdering a woman in his backyard.

He can’t actually discount that latter possibility, so he stumbles his way downstairs and tries to look out through the kitchen windows, but they’re too grimy for him to see much. Cursing at himself, he goes back upstairs and looks out of the master bedroom’s windows instead.

The back garden looks pretty much just like it did yesterday, before everything went crazy. Overgrown, huge, but not noticeably filled with bloodthirsty monsters or ghosts or anything. He can see the birdbath from the night before, and what look like some weird little clear patches, and the woods, and a sad little shed just at the edge of the property, but nothing else. Nobody being murdered. Nothing even moving around much, really.

He lets out a breath, and then nearly jumps out of his skin when the sound repeats itself – louder, this time.

When it stops again, he takes another look, but everything still seems deceptively peaceful.

He’s contemplating the merits of another shower when the sound repeats – and this time, keeps going.

“What the hell is that?!” he wonders.

Maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe it’s like a troll mating call, or something.

It’s got to stop eventually, right?

Half an hour later, he’s dressed and in his kitchen, hands over his ears as he listens to that ear-splitting, bone-chilling _yowl_ go _on_ and _on_ and _on._ He fumbles for Cecil’s letter, turning it over to see if there’s anything he missed on the back about some kind of banshee or something, then he skims it over again and his eyes stick on a line about that rundown old shed, one that he barely remembers reading:

_If it makes too much noise, take a paper plate of cat food out there, and slide it in through the opening._

At this point, Larry figures he’d do just about any senseless thing to get that noise to stop. But he still hesitates. Out there? In the garden? The garden with the trollin it?

He dithers for another ten minutes before he cracks and flings the cupboard with the cat food in it open. There’s no can opener, but fortunately they’re the kind with the little pull-tabs on top. He pops one open, opts to just leave the contents in the can in lieu of any kind of dishware – disposable or otherwise – and yanks on his shoes.

The kitchen door opens with a little more ease than it had yesterday.

Outside, the racket is _even louder._ Larry winces and presses his free hand to one ear, hesitates for a moment, and then grits his teeth and starts trudging towards the shed.

In the daylight, at least, it’s easier to see where the path is. He kind of expects to see all of the places where he’d fallen over and crushed stuff, too, but maybe he fell over less often than he remembers, because nothing looks even a little bit trampled or broken.

By the time he makes it to the shed, he’s almost surprised to discover that his ears aren’t bleeding. The woods loom ominously close, thick and dark and foreboding, where before he’d thought they were quaint and nature-y and pleasant.

Hopefully, anything that might want to kill him has been chased off by all this noise.

The shed is small, with a slanted roof covered in moss, and plants growing up and down the walls, even encroaching on the door. The only opening he can find is a tiny slot at the top, barely big enough for him to fit the tin of cat food through. It looks there was a window in the door, once, but someone boarded it up from the outside. He pushes the tin in, imagines the sound of it _thunking_ to the ground underneath all of the yowling.

The result isn’t immediate. He waits, with the sinking feeling that he’s going to have to go and get like a plate or something and try again, but gradually it tapers off and then stops altogether.

His ears ring in the quiet that follows.

Even as he tells himself it’s probably a bad idea, Larry works his way up onto his tiptoes, straining to peer through the tiny opening and into the shack. Is there an animal in there? Like a cat or something? Not a _normal_ animal, definitely. He’s heard some noisy cats before, but nothing like that. Still. It seems pretty cruel, locking an animal in a shed like this, feeding it through a slot whenever it gets too noisy. If it’s been in there for any length of time, it must be a mess. Where does it do it’s bathroom stuff? Unless it doesn’t need to do bathroom stuff, but even if it doesn’t, four wooden walls and nothing else to look at would drive even a supernatural creature insane. Wouldn’t it?

Or is it like a genie, maybe? The genie of the shed? But like an evil genie. The brunette Barbara Eden one in the blue pants. Like a malicious genie.

No matter how hard he looks, though, he can only see the wood on the opposite interior wall. The opening is too small and too high for anything else. He tries pressing a little closer, putting his hand against the wall, and then jumps back when something _thuds_ against it.

A low rumble, like a growl, drifts up, and he swallows, and figures he’s tested his luck enough for now. It just went quiet; he doesn’t want the thing to start up again.

As quietly as he can, he backs away from the shed, keeping one eye on the woods as he heads for the house. This leads to him walking sort of half-backwards as he tries to follow the path, which might not be his most brilliant maneuver ever, really, because this is not easy terrain he’s traversing, here.

At least this time when he falls, he manages to stumble his way into a relatively clear patch of the garden.

He lands on his hands and knees, face inches from some very dry grass. When he looks up, he sees that the little clearing is ringed around with tiny mushrooms.

_Weird_ , he thinks.

“YEE-HAW! Looks like we got ourselves an unwary traveler, boys!” someone shouts from overhead.

With a gasp he looks up, only to see a tiny little man with gossamer wings and a cowboy hat, floating up above him. He blinks, and suddenly the air is full of dozens of tiny figures just like him.


	3. Larry Daley's School of Diplomacy

 

“Beware, mortal!” the tiny cowboy says, folding his arms across his chest. “For you have stumbled into-”

“What seems to be going on here?” Another voice says, from Larry’s far right – back towards the direction of the woods. The cowboy fairy whips around, scowling, and Larry follows the line of his glare to see another contingent of tiny flying people.

These ones have armour, though, and helmets, and seem to be wearing little red skirts.

“You! You keep outta this! He fell into _our_ circle, fair and square!” the cowboy fairy says, pointing firmly down towards the little ring of mushrooms.

“Forgive me if I don’t think your people are precisely capable of handling an actual human abduction,” the newcomer says, derisively, and shares a grin with his nearest compatriot.

“We can handle it _just_ _fine!”_ Cowboy fairy says. “We don’t need you poking your noses into our business!”

Around about this time, Larry realizes that there doesn’t actually appear to be anything keeping him in place. He makes his way to his feet, dusts himself off, and gently pushes back a few of the other cowboy fairies who try and grab at him. His fall looks to have crushed some of the mushrooms, but otherwise everything seems fine.

“Hey, hey!” the lead cowboy fairy snaps. “You stay down on the ground! We ain’t done with you yet!”

“Listen, I’m really sorry about your… circle… mushroom thing,” Larry says, fighting off an extreme case of vertigo as part of his brain tries to process the reality of talking to a tiny, flying person. “But, I… I gotta go. Busy day, y’know? Lots to do!”

He starts to walk away, being especially careful of where he steps, now.

“Wait! Stop!” Cowboy fairy calls after him. “You! Gigantor! Get yer butt back over here so we can whisk you away to the fairy realm!”

“Oh, well done,” the red-skirted fairy leader – looks kind of like a miniature Roman soldier, Larry thinks, squinting at him for a second – says. “Truly, you’ve proven your competence a hundredfold. Now let’s see how these matters _should_ be handled – MEN!”

Larry feels a moment of unease as the other fairies start to focus in on him. Their attention is much more laser-like, and, he realizes, they’re flying in tiny formations.

Also, are those _swords?_

“We _are handling it!_ This our dang circle!” Cowboy fairy insists. His fellows bristle, and start to draw what look like little petal-tipped wands from miniscule holsters at their hips. “Fairy law! We got rights!”

“You haven’t even captured him! He’s literally walking away!” Roman fairy replies, gesturing towards Larry, who is moving with a lot more speed now.

“Well o’ course he’s gettin’ away, it’s _allll_ part of the plan,” Cowboy fairy blusters.

“The plan?” Roman fairy repeats, practically dripping with skepticism.

“Yeah. The… ethereal… long con,” Cowboy fairy declares, folding his arms again. “Which you would know about, if you knew anything about American fairy magic. But you don’t. Because you’re _a god dang foreigner!”_ Larry tells himself not to get distracted by supernatural territory disputes and just focus on making it to the kitchen door.

“You mean we’re of the Old World. Unlike you nouveau fairies who can’t even manage a simple kidnapping,” Roman fairy counters.

Larry figures the path is clear enough for him to speed up now, and he does, leaving the increasingly hostile dialogue behind as he makes a break for the kitchen door and then, once again, flings himself hastily through it.

He turns the latch under the knob, hoping that the lock is stronger than it seems to be.

Through the grimy kitchen windows, he can see something that looks suspiciously like an explosion of sparkly purple clouds.

“Uh, Teddy?” he calls. “I think there are tiny people trying to murder one another in the backyard.”

No answer.

“Hello?” he tries again. “Are you… around?”

He waits, but the kitchen remains still and silent. After a few minutes he makes his way upstairs again, and peers out through the master bedroom windows. The purple clouds look to be dying down. He thinks he can see tiny figures darting around, like little hummingbirds, but they’re moving too fast for him to really follow. A few minutes more and everything seems to quiet down, until the garden is still and silent again, and unthinkingly he finds his gaze turning towards the shed.

When he realizes where he’s staring, he moves away from the windows and back out into the hall.

In search of something – anything – safe for him to focus his thoughts on, he latches onto the drawstring for the attic.

Hadn’t he been planning to clear that out, before everything had gone crazy?

Well, maybe that’s one part of his plan he can stick to. Squaring his shoulders, he pulls down the ladder, and after only a brief hesitation, climbs his way up again. The note, he reminds himself, hadn’t said anything about not messing with the attic.

The bright daylight streaming in through the round center window is incongruously cheery, warming up the honey-toned wood, making it feel almost… friendly. That atmosphere is diminished somewhat by all the hunting trophies, which now seem disproportionately creepy. He stares at them as he pulls himself up. There’s barely enough room to stand, and he almost knocks straight into the creepy-hat-stand-under-a-sheet, and has a panicked moment where he’s suddenly afraid that it’s not a hat stand at all, but then he rips off the sheet and it more or less is. A slightly wobbly, but very fine-looking hat stand. He runs a hand down the smooth polish of it for a moment, and takes a ludicrous amount of comfort in its solidity and simplicity.

Actually, it sort of reminds him of a hat stand his grandparents used to keep in the entryway of their old brownstone, back when he was a kid.

Larry gives it an experimental push, trying to figure out where the wobble is. Two of the feet are loose. He bends down, figures it’s nothing that can’t be fixed by tightening a few screws, and makes up his mind about it.

Wrapping it back up in the sheet, he carries it carefully down the ladder – it’s heavier than it looks – and sets it carefully in the entryway, next to the door. As one of the few pieces of furniture in the house, it looks a little silly. But, Larry figures, it’s a start.

He returns to the attic, grabs the first box he sees, intends to use his keys to open it, remembers he doesn’t have his keys, wonders if he should call animal control like he’d meant to, figures there’s no point in calling animal control on a probably-magical monkey, finds a pen in his pocket anyway, and uses that to cut the tape instead.

The box opens to a cloud of dust and old newspapers.

Larry roots around just long enough to make sure that, yep, just newspapers, and then moves on to another one.

By the time he takes a break, he’s found several more boxes of newspapers, one that looks to be full of old clothes, and another that’s got nothing but novelty coffee mugs. He’s about half done, not counting the hunting trophies, and his stomach is rumbling and there’s a persistent headache pushing at his temples. He checks the time on his phone. Almost eleven o’clock.

With a deep breath – that turns into a cough, because dusty attic air – he picks up the box of coffee mugs, and heads downstairs again.

The kitchen door is open.

He stops dead in his tracks, holding the box full of mugs, staring at the crack of daylight where it spills through the sliver-sized opening and across the floor.

He glances around, looking for any signs of movement, and carefully lowers the box onto a nearby countertop. Senses on high alert, he walks slowly towards the door. Nothing seems to be amiss, apart from the obvious. Maybe it just… didn’t close properly, and opened on its own?

Yeah, no, he’s not _that_ stupid.

“Teddy?” he calls.

Still no answer.

Squaring his shoulders, he pushes the door fully shut again.

Something rustles behind him.

He whips around, just in time to see a piece of packing paper from the coffee mug box flutter to the floor.

His eyes track the movement until it lands, softly, like a leaf on the breeze.

Holding his breath, he walks over to the box, clutching his pen tightly as the closest thing he’s got to a weapon. Anything small enough to fit in that box can’t be a troll, at least. Maybe it’s the monkey. Maybe the monkey still has his _keys._

On that promising thought, he jumps towards the box, letting loose a fierce cry as he looks inside.

Nothing but coffee mugs, and considerably less packing paper than he remembers.

A hoot from the dining room draws his attention, and he catches the faint scent of smoke.

That can’t possibly be a good sign.

Without even really stopping to think twice about it, he dashes for the dining room, and then freezes in the entryway.

Four… beings are clustered around the floor. They’re the bigger than the fairies – maybe the size of your average garden gnome – with disproportionately large hands and feet, and huge upper body muscles. Sort of like tiny gorilla-men, some part of Larry’s brain dazedly notes. Except, green. Their skin’s green and their hair’s the colour of moss, and they’re dressed like cavemen, in rags and scraps of fur, except he’s pretty sure one of them is wearing a necklace made out of bottle caps. They’re all gathered around a pile of packing paper in the middle of the floor, which is probably the source of the smoky scent, seeing as how it’s on fire.

It’s _on fire._ On the _wooden floor._

Larry dashes forward, and the little green men (seriously, green men, he has _Martians_ now?!) scatter. With a curse he starts stamping out the flames.

Fortunately, the fire isn’t too strong, and he manages to put it out with only a singed pant leg and some scorch marks on the floor to show for it.

“What the heck did you think you were doing?” he snaps at the green guys, unintentionally slipping into the same tone of voice he uses whenever he catches Nicky doing something dangerous. The green guys have all clustered into the far corner of the dining room by now, hooting and grumbling and otherwise making noises that only vaguely resemble language. One of them dares to step forward, making an angry sound and waving his arms, like a desperate camper trying to scare off a bear.

“Hey! _No!”_ Larry snaps, wondering if he’s actually gone insane. “Don’t you give me that! You could have burned this whole house down! Is that what you want? To burn this house down? Are you a pack of tiny arsons? Bad dudes? Criminals? Hmm?”

The green guys stare at him with wide eyes, and then look at one another. Hesitantly, one of them starts shaking his head. The others soon follow suit, keeping their eyes downcast, not quite looking directly at Larry.

“No? Then why are you lighting fires in the dining room?” Larry asks, folding his arms across his chest.

“Fi-fi?” one of them cautiously mumbles.

“Yeah. Fire. Which burns stuff like wood, which happens to be what ninety percent of this house is made of,” Larry says.

“Fi! Goo!” the bold one at the front says, waving a hand excitedly towards the scorch marks.

“No, fire not good. Fire _burns,_ ” Larry snaps. “That’s why we keep it in the fireplace!”

The guys glance at one another again.

“Fi-paaa?” one asks.

Larry honestly has no idea what he’s doing when he points towards the living room.

“Yes, the fireplace. Where we keep fire, so we do not burn down the house,” he says. Then he marches the pack of possibly-Martians-but-probably-something-else-like-maybe-goblins-now-that-he’s-thinking-of-it-aren’t-goblins-supposed-to-be-green into the next room, and pointedly shows them the fireplace, like this is all supposed to make sense, somehow.

“Fireplace,” he reiterates.

“Fiyaapaa,” one of them repeats, as they all peer curiously through the grate.

Come to think of it, Larry’s not even sure what kind of fireplace that is. Gas? Wood?

It’s probably a question that can wait until he no longer has a pack of maybe-goblins to deal with.

Said pack is currently looking at him expectantly now. It takes him a moment to figure out why. When he does, he shakes his head.

“No, I’m not making a fire now. I’m not even sure how this one works yet, and it’s not even cold.”

“Fiyaapaa! Fiyaapaa!” one of the little guys grunts demandingly at him.

“No!” he snaps back. “There’s been enough fire for today. Now you guys gotta get out of here. Go on. Time to go home, to… wherever the heck you live.”

“Fiyaapaa! Paa!”

“No, no ‘fiyaapaa’, it’s outside time now. Shoo,” Larry says, and starts herding them back towards the kitchen door.

To his amazement, they actually sort of go with it, even though they grumble and grunt the whole way. When he opens the door, they tumble out, and then he can only watch in amazement as they zip into the mess of overgrown plants with astonishing speed, and disappear. In the blink of an eye it’s like they were never even there.

“Hookay,” he says, letting out a heavy breath. In his pocket, his phone rings, and he nearly jumps fifty feet into the air before he recognizes the sound.

He sees Erica’s number on the screen and hurries to answer.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dad!” Nicky’s voice chimes at him.

“Nicky! Hey! It’s good to hear from you, I was gonna call tonight,” he says, and even all the madness that is his life right now couldn’t stop the grin that’s spreading across his face. “You still settling in okay?”

“Of course. Grandma and Grandpa keep buying me presents and asking me about feelings and talking about upheaval and stuff,” Nicky tell him. “I miss you, but I’m alright.”

“I miss you too, buddy,” Larry says.

“How’s the house?” his son asks, excitedly. “Does it really look like in the pictures you sent? Mom says she thinks there might’ve been some kind of mistake.”

“Mistake? No,” he replies. “Why would she think there was a mistake?”

“I dunno. So it does look like in the pictures?”

“Yup,” he replies. “It’s big. And old. And… weird.”

Nicky laughs.

“Cool. When can I come see it?”

A cold knot of dread settles into the pit of his stomach. Oh, crap. Nicky. He can’t bring Nicky _here_. With the trolls and the things and the whatever-the-hell-is-in-the-shed. And the trolls. Nuh-uh. No chance.

“I dunno, there’s not a lot of furniture here yet, kiddo,” he hedges. “No beds or anything.”

“It’s okay. I can sleep in my sleeping bag,” Nicky suggests. “It’d be like camping! And I could help paint and do stuff, too!”

“That sounds great,” Larry helplessly replies, because it does – or it would, if his concept of reality hadn’t just been flipped onto its back. He stares out at the garden, suddenly realizing that he’s just standing there with the door open. Everything looks calm and serene and totally normal.

_Lies,_ Larry thinks, and hastily backs into the kitchen, closing the door again.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “Let me get some basics checked out, make sure that none of the floor’s going to cave-in anywhere and that there aren’t any man-eating termite infestations, and then we’ll talk about it again. Deal?”

“Deal,” Nicky agrees.

“Great. Now tell me more about this new school you’re going to…”

Larry listens to his son’s happy voice chatter on while he tries not to flip out. He’s going to have to lie. He’s going to have to tell his kid that there’s, like, deadly mold in the bathrooms or something, and he’s never going to be able to bring him over here. It’s going to take him however long it takes him to be able to go out to California on his own before he can see him in person again.

This is a nightmare.

“Dad?” Nicky asks.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m here,” he says. “Connection just got a little fuzzy.”

“It’s cool. Mom says it’s time to go, though, so I’ll talk to you later?”

“Absolutely,” Larry agrees. “I’ll call you before dinner, how’s that?”

“Great. Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, Nicky. Love you.”

“Love you too!”

He listens to the ‘click’ on the other end of the line, and hangs onto his phone for a few seconds, before leaning forward to rest his head against the nearest wall.

“Gotcha!” a tiny voice shouts from his pocket, and with a cry of alarm Larry flings himself backwards and smacks his hip into the countertop.

With a ‘puff’ of sparkly purple smoke, something shoots up into the air in front of him.

“You though you could get away, didn’t you, mortal? But no one out foxes ol’ Jedediah, not in this neck of the woods!”

_“Really?”_ Larry asks of the universe, as the tiny cowboy fairy flutters there, holding his weird petal-stick out like it’s an eensie-weensie hand gun.

“Prepare to be whisked away to the fairy realm!” the fairy – Jedediah, apparently – says, and then there’s another puff of sparkly purple smoke. Larry figures it would probably be a bad idea to inhale any of it, and shoves his arm over his nose. He takes a step sideways.

“Okay, enough of that!” he snaps, and reaches out. His first instinct is to grab for the wings, but they look surprisingly delicate and Larry is not, actually, trying to be an asshole here, so at the last millisecond he course-corrects and grabs the fairy by the back of his miniature vest instead. “Would you quit trying to ‘whisk’ me away, or whatever this is? Look at me. Look at you. Do you see the size difference here? What even is your plan?”

“Do not manhandle me!” Jedediah demands. “Let me go right now! I don’t like this!”

“Oh, you don’t like this?” Larry replies. “Newsflash, tiny, you’re the one who started this fight. If you can’t take the heat, maybe you shouldn’t be in my kitchen.”

The fairy’s face twists with anger.

“I’m gonna turn you into a pig,” he announces, brandishing his petal wand. “Into a dadgum pig!”

Before Larry can react, the biggest sparkly-cloud explosion so far erupts over the both of them. For a second, he’s actually terrified. He holds his breath and keeps his grip on Jedediah’s vest, and backs out of the cloud as quickly as he can, but he can feel his skin tingling.

_Shit,_ he thinks. _This is even dumber than dying in the backyard._

But he’s still got hands. He can feel them holding onto the fairy. And he’s not getting any closer to the ground or developing any sudden urges to roll in mud or eat slop.

When the smoke clears, the only change seems to be that everything about him has turned pink.

His clothes are pink. His shoes are pink.  His skin is _definitely_ way pinker than usual, and if he has to hazard a guess – and he does – he’d venture that looking in the mirror would probably reveal pink hair and eyebrows, and hopefully not pink eyes or teeth or something even more disturbing.

“Dang it,” Jedediah says.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Larry angrily demands, resisting the urge to give him a violent shake, but only just.

“Well now the cat’s outta the bag, isn’t it. Now you know. You may as well tell everyone! Spread it far an’ wide! The mighty Jedediah’s great shame. His spells never work right!”

“Fix this, right now,” Larry says. “Get rid of all this pink.”

“Didn’t you just hear me, Laredo? My spells don’t _work right_!” Jedediah replies, lowering his face against his chest a little and mumbling something.

“What was that?”

“I said I don’t even know how to try to do a reversal!” he admits, sulkily. “It’s… structured magic, and it don’t much like me.”

With a scowl, Larry reaches out with his free hand, carefully pinching the tiny little petal-wand-thing that Jedediah is holding onto. The fairy tries to evade him, but being stuck in place makes it pretty ineffectual. He takes the delicate weapon between his forefinger and thumb and yanks it away.

“Alright, listen up,” he says. “I am having a very bad day today. I just found out last night that not only is the house I bought haunted, it’s also some kind of Grand Central Station for weird… _things_ , like you.”

“Don’t call me a ‘thing’. That’s – that’s hurtful. And unnecessary.”

“Fine. Creatures, beings, people, whatever,” Larry says. “I’ve put all of my money into this house, only now, I can’t even bring my kid here to see me. I’ve got ghosts, and possibly goblins, a monkey stole my keys, I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, and last night a troll tried to kill me. So the last thing I need is for some upstart cousin of Tinkerbell’s to turn me _permanently pink._ Now you’re going to help me fix this, or I’m going to take this little petal-stick-thing-”

“A wand. It’s called a wand.”

“I’m going to take this _wand_ , and flush it down the toilet.”

“It ain’t all that valuable,” Jedediah tells him. “We make ‘em in big batches, accidentally break ‘em all the time. It’s more of an accessory type thing, I’ve got like twenty spares in my stump.”

“God dammit,” Larry says, and snaps the wand with his fingers.

“Oh c’mon, that doesn’t mean you can just break it for no good reason!” Jedediah protests. “They’re easy to make, but that don’t mean I _want_ to spend time replacin’ ‘em!”

“Yeah, that was more like an accidental rage deal than an intentional thing,” Larry admits.

They stand in awkward silence for a moment.

Jedediah folds his arms.

“Well, look, it’ll probably wear off,” the fairy finally says. “Maybe in a day or two.”

“I can’t go out in public like this!” Larry protests.

“That _is_ a mighty lot o’ pink,” Jedediah concedes. Then he mumbles something again.

“What was that?” Larry asks.

More mumbles.

“Look, man, I will admit that it is very impressive that your voice sounds reasonably normal and not all tiny and squeaky, given the scale issues we’ve got going on, but that doesn’t mean it’s exactly _easy_ to hear, either.”

“I _said…_ Octavius might know how to fix it,” the fairy grudgingly admits.

“Octavius?” Larry asks.

“Yeah, he’s this horrible, bossy, Old World fairy who migrated over from Europe like fifty years ago, and he’s been tryin’ to run this show ever since,” Jedediah explains. “Y’saw him earlier, with his army. They know some Old Magic I guess, I dunno. Prefer to fight with swords and whatnot so we don’t see much of it, and they’re always steppin’ into our territory! I hate him! He don’t respect none o’ our traditions, like when he was hornin’ in our fairy circle earlier! That’s just downright rude! God dang old fairies, always thinkin’ they’re better’n we are just ‘cause they’ve been alive for two thousand whole years, well la-dee-da…”

“And this guy’s better at magic than you?” Larry presses.

“No he ain’t!” Jedediah snaps. “Like I said, he don’t hardly ever use it. But they’re, y’know, _orderly_ fairies and reversal magic’s part o’ that spectrum an’ all, so I guess he _might_ be better at this one _specific_ field of expertise. Maybe. A little. I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Okay. So go get him,” Larry decides.

“Ain’t you been paying attention?” Jedediah demands. “Me an’ him, we aren’t exactly on friendly terms, here. There’s no way, no how I’m bringin’ him nowhere. You want his help, you’re gonna have to find him yourself.”

“Fine. Where is he?”

Jedediah mumbles again.

“Enough with the mumbling!” Larry snaps.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t… we haven’t exactly been able to pinpoint his exact base of operations. Exactly,” Jedediah admits.

Larry stares at him incredulously.

“It’s a _back yard,”_ he says. “It’s not that big.”

“Well maybe not for you, Gigantor, with your giant stompin’ feet, crushin’ over everything in your path like some kinda unstoppable mega monster, but it’s plenty big when you’re normal sized!” Jedediah tells him.

“So what am I supposed to do, then?”

Jedediah shrugs.

“Maybe try to wash it off with soap?” he suggests.


End file.
